By Steve Hynd
If recess appointments were wrong on principle back in 2007 when Bush was President, then they're still wrong on principle now - and Obama just made a buttload of them.
A bunch of Democratically-leaning pundits are writing that Obama is perfectly justified in doing this - and those who wrote back in 2007 that recess appointments were simply wrong and a perversion of the rule of law are now revealed as hypocritical partisan hacks. They know who they are. A bunch of Republican-leaning pundits are just as hypocritically yelling foul after defending Bush's actions against unwarranted obstructionism back in 2007. They're unprincipled partisan hacks too and again they know who they are. Fuck them all, bi-partisanly and sideways.
But my friend James Joyner gets it exactly right:
Obama has continued a recent trend of abusing the recess appointment process, which exists solely because the Framers envisioned Congress being out of session for months at a stretch, not as a backdoor way to bypass the Senate when it�s on hiatus for a few days.
John Bolton, anybody?
Indeed, back in August 2005, a promising young Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, said of Bolton�s recess appointment as UN ambassador, �To some degree, he�s damaged goods. I think that means we�ll have less credibility and, ironically, be less equipped to reform the United Nations in the way that it needs to be reformed.� Less than five years later, however, he�s justifying his decision in words eerily reminiscent of Bush�s: �This post is too important to leave vacant any longer, especially during a war and a vital debate about U.N. reform.�
To be clear: I�m not saying Obama is doing anything unprecedented or particularly worthy of criticism. Rather, I�m pointing out yet another data point, as if another were needed, confirming the thesis that presidents seldom give up extraordinary uses of power once predecessors get away with it. Obama is 44th in line on that one.
Some of us warned about that continuation of abuse of power too.
I think the situations between 2007 and 2009 are different. There were serious questions about Bolton, who quite frankly, didn't do much good anyways. If there are serious questions about the people that Obama nominated from the Republicans, I'd love to see them -- because quite frankly, I haven't.
ReplyDeleteThere's that, and also the sheer numbers of nominees that Republicans in the Senate have refused to allow so much as an up or down vote on. As the Obama administration noted, these nominees have been held up for an average of 214 days -- that's ridiculous.
The Republicans have a political strategy of obstructionism right now, wherein they will attempt to choke off the Obama administration of performing even the most basic of governmental functions. As far as I'm concerned, in the case of Obama's nominees what the Republicans in the Senate are doing is unconstitutional. The Constitution tells the Senate its job on nominees is the provide advice and consent to the President -- "consent" means a vote. If a nominee has been held up for months without a vote, either provide a reason or a vote. That's their job, and they aren't doing it.
To be fair Steve, the current level of GOP obstructionism is far beyond anything the Founders envisioned or I imagined that even GOPers were capable of. There does come a point where the functioning of the government justifies the act for the general good of our country, IMO.
ReplyDeleteI'd remind you for instance in Bolton's case, IIRC the Dems were allowing debate on the floor and publicly disclosing their objections to a clearly disastrous nomimee. In that case, Bush purposely circumvented an ongoing process because he thought he'd lose the vote. In the instant case, the GOP is blocking the process altogether so I'm not sure it's an entirely fair comparison.
I�m not with you on this one. There is a pretty clear difference between the recess appointment of a John Bolton, when the purpose of bypassing the Senate was because it was pretty damned clear that the Senate was going to reject his appointment, and the appointments Obama has made because the minority party is just refusing to allow the appointments to come to a vote that everybody expects they would likely win. Show me that these appointments actually violate the will of the Senate majority as Bolton�s did and you might have an argument I can agree with.
ReplyDeleteIt is, as Dave has put with the budget and deficits, a sucker�s game to expect Obama and the Democrats to play by a different set of rules when the Republicans aren�t playing the game in good faith. Not to mention he�s playing shorthanded at a time when it would be really helpful to have these positions fully staffed.
Source Watch stats...
ReplyDeletehttp://bit.ly/brhtpM
Since the beginning of the United States, recess appointments have been used by presidents to avoid senatorial approval of nominees. After the Senate failed to confirm John Rutledge as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, President George Washington waited until a Senate recess and appointed him there.
More recently, presidents have turned to recess appointments frequently:
* President Ronald Reagan used this privilege 243 times.
* President George H.W. Bush used this privilege 77 times.
* President Bill Clinton used this privilege 140 times.
* President George W. Bush has used privilege 171 times (as of April 4, 2007).
Can we say "tempest in a teapot"? (Get it?)
These comments not in accordance with my liberal standards!
ReplyDeleteI'm so tired of the left/dems/libs behaving in the same manner as the right of bush's day. I will have to find a new label for myself. Maybe, radical lib.
Obama (in many ways) is a continuation of bush just not as weasely looking.
Come on libs ~ do what's right. What was wrong for bush is wrong for obama.
The Bolton comparison is just silly. The problem for Bolton was that he couldn't garner a regular old-fashioned majority in committee, and there was as much angst in parts of the Republican side (Voinovich) as with the Democrats. Nor was Bolton part of a pattern of Democratic obstruction -- it really was a fundamental policy disagreement over the direction of foreign policy with the White House.
ReplyDeleteThe folks Obama gave recess appointments to have all emerged from committee and either have been stalled in getting to the floor because of stupid holds (even though they'll all get at the least an old-fashioned majority if not unanimous approval when the vote is taken) or like Becker have indeed received a majority of both the committee and the Senate, but not enough to overcome a filibuster. And golly, if now the Repubs simply say they'll filibuster any qualified labor lawyer for the NLRB (which is structured in theory to have both management and labor representation), things have reached a pretty desperate pass.
These appointments have been targeted by Obama strictly at GOP obstructionism and the Senate's bizarre dysfunctional procedures. It's not an abuse of Presidential power. It's a wakeup call to the GOP that they can either get back to work and do the business they've been elected to do, or the President will proceed on his own to staff his administration with folks who are supported by a majority of the Senate. If the President didn't have the threat of recess appointments in his back pocket, there'd be no incentive for the minority to ever cooperate with staffing up a new Administration.
My thoughts above but I agree with all of the other commentors.
ReplyDeleteLOL!!!! This comment thread is hilarious, really.
ReplyDeleteWould Becker get through the Senate with 51 votes? No? Then Steve is right and the above comments are special pleading.
Recess appointments are made because *every* administration - even liberal Democratic ones- have supporters to whom it owes favors who are so ideologically extreme, or partisan, or ethically dubious or blatantly unqualified as nominees, that they cannot make it through the Senate at all or only with an expensive waste of political capital. So they go in through the backdoor. Not the first time nor the last we will see.
Kudos to Steve on being consistent in his positions.
@ zenpundit -- Uh, yes, Becker already has gotten thru the Senate with several more than 51 votes -- except it was for cloture. So it didn't count 'cause they didn't have 60 votes to break the filibuster. But, yeah, Becker would win an up-or-down vote, which is why the GOP filibustered.
ReplyDeleteHi All,
ReplyDeleteLooks like a lot of people disagree with me on this one. C'est la vie :-)
But people are misunderstanding: there were many who back then wrote about all of Bush's recess appointments - not just Bolton, he's a strawman in that he's the weakest point of attack - as being wrong on principle because minority lawmakers were meant to throw any sand they could in the works to be an opposition. Those are the people who should be consistent now and some aren't.
Regards, Steve
It's worth looking at some of Bush's other recess appointments and the circumstances surrounding them, especially from his first term. The situations, with pure obstructivism from the opposition and frustration from the White House, are not disimiliar. What's good for the goose...
ReplyDeleteRegards, Steve
I'm with you, Steve.
ReplyDelete@nadezhda Uh...sorry but politics is a game of "what have you done for me lately". Prior vote totals to confirm in the Senate for nominees don't mean much on their next appointment; if they did, you would have Justice Robert Bork sitting on the Supreme Court today.
ReplyDeleteThere are constitutional limits on recess appointments. To remain in effect a recess appointment must be approved by the Senate by the end of the next session of Congress, or the position becomes vacant again; in current practice this means that a recess appointment must be approved by roughly the end of the next calendar year. Recess appointments are authorized by Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which states:
ReplyDeleteThe President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.
Recess appointments are essentially temporary, subject to approval or rejection by Congress. If an appointee is too repugnant to be allowed to serve til the end of a term, there is always impeachment.
Is this really all that important?
Says John B:
ReplyDelete"Is this really all that important? "
Not at all. It is a bunch of over-dramatized drivel actually. But the whole debate has been useful for spotting out which talking heads have replaced integrity with drivel.
A good post on Steve's part.
"Is this really all that important? "
ReplyDeleteNot at all. It is a bunch of over-dramatized drivel actually. But the whole debate has been useful for spotting out which talking heads have replaced integrity with drivel.
A good post on Steve's part.
I very much agree.
ReplyDeleteSteve was and is correct.
Drivel strikes exactly the right note.
Nevertheless I was inspired to check the context of an old Emerson quote.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. � 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' � Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
But people are misunderstanding: there were many who back then wrote about all of Bush's recess appointments - not just Bolton, he's a strawman in that he's the weakest point of attack -
ReplyDeleteWith all due respect Steve, the only recess appointment listed anywhere in your post is Bolton�s, and your attack that people in 2007, when Bolton was appointed, were making arguments against recess appointments, also makes it pretty clear it was the Bolton appointment that had people riled up. Ultimately, the argument reads that because Bolton�s recess appointment was bad, then so were the ones that Obama just made. You can�t do that and then complain its us that are the ones using a strawman argument by noting that the Bolton case and the ones Obama just appointed don�t exactly share a lot in common.
You say there was some obstructionism of Bush appointees in his first term? Well then, use those cases as your examples. Show us how unreasonable and obstructionist the Dems were in not allowing hundreds of Bush�s appointees come to an up or down vote on the Senate floor that they were likely to win and that his only choice was to go through the recess appointment route. And were those �hypocritical partisan flacks� making the same arguments in 2001, 2002 that they were in 2007 with Bolton? Hell, even I likely would have had bad things to say about recess appointments with the Bolton case being fresh on my mind as an example of their use, but who was making those arguments when you say the Dems were acting like the Republicans now? And then, if you don�t mind, could show us why it was clearly wrong for Bush to make those recess appointments under those circumstances? Because that�s the principle you�re now attacking, not recess appointments in general, but recess appointments to get past what would appear to be unprecedented obstructionism by the minority party.
Hell, I don�t think recess appointments are the way to go generally, and the Bolton case certainly does count as the poster child for why that is, and I can even see condemning them in principle if that sort of thing is what the recess appointments are being used for, even if it is the case that they�ve been used in that fashion since the U.S. was founded. Obama�s appointments don�t appear to have been used for that purpose, and you certainly haven�t made the case that they were. All you�ve said so far is that people who condemned Bush�s recess appointments, and Bolton�s in particular, should also be condemning Obama�s, and then getting defensive when we all point out that the two situations are hardly comparable.
As John�s Emerson quote up above notes, rigid applications of principles regardless of the situation usually doesn�t work out so well. For a different example, a whole lot of us made a point of hammering Bush over the size of the deficits he was running, while most Republican supporters tended to ignore such things. Obama also increased the deficit considerably his first year in power, what with the stimulus bill and everything. Should we, who have made it clear we think deficits are bad things, have demanded that he do everything possible to balance the budget right away and damn the consequences to the economy? It would have been consistent, I suppose, but also nearly insane under the circumstances. And I suppose you must then agree with the suddenly-concerned-about-fiscal-restraint-Republicans in attacking us with charges of hypocrisy?
Circumstances matter, and while these particular recess appointments were justified under the current circumstances in my view, it doesn�t mean Obama has a free pass to make them whenever he feels like it, just as he doesn't have a free pass to continue running up the debt once the economy gets back on its feet.
Enough rambling then. Usually, your arguments are better thought out than this one, is all.